The Existence of God

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The cosmological argument encompasses the existence and origin of God as argued by different philosophers in ancient history like Aristotle, Plato all through to medieval St Thomas Aquinas. This argument was further advanced in the 20th century by Fredrick Copleston. The greatest argument and common among all these philosophers is the term traditionally referred to as argument from universal causation or uncaused cause.

Besides these philosophers, other numerous theories can be stated to prove the existence of God which gets their foundation from the existence of the World. This paper will be focused in the discussion of such argument which will be widely based in general lines of Third Way as advanced by St Thomas Aquinas. The paper will also consider some objections given towards Aquinas cosmos perspective for Gods existence. Due to similarity of cosmological and cause, numerous philosophers have advanced several conclusions that cosmological arguments is concerned with causality exists that everything has a first cause. The argument of Gods existence can first be traced back in the bible through Apostle Paul while writing to Romans 1:19-20 which states, “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” The argument continues with the fact that existence of the world cannot explain itself; therefore something else must be presented to account and explain it (Bobik 1965: 345).

However, philosophers have not been in a position to explain the unexplained account of world’s existence which therefore narrows down to existence of God. According to Thompson (1955: 284), such unexplained existence of the world and the uncaused being is referred to as God. This notion is derived to present the essence of the cosmological argument as discussed in this paper (Thompson 1955: 285).

According Aquinas, there is a force of causality which is regarded as pervasive, self evident and basic to the existence of all the features of the world. This is boosted by the study of science which credits that every material effect, particles and other matter has an adequate cause. The causality argument is based on change and nature supported by the statement that, if indeed it does not exist, then change is hypothetical and abstract hence nature does not as well exist.

The second line of argument is concerned with the interplay between existence and essence. To advance this argument, Aquinas bases the essence of man a component of all the characteristics and properties that constitutes him as man and not something else. However, the existence is not classified as one of these characteristics and components that make man with the notion that human being can even perceive man who does not really exist. The argument still states that all the properties that constitute to the man as a being does not make him in any way exist in the world (Caputo 1974: 219).

Therefore man’s essence is totally different from his existence from this perspective which still proves that man is not a contingent in any manner. Hence, Gods existence is termed as a necessary being due to his very nature that makes him exist the way he exist. All the world’s creations are therefore given existence by God which is referred as real existence likened to his own in not necessarily a contingent existence. If this were not the case as noted by Thompson (1995: 346) would yield to an impossibility which forms a non–contingent contingent. This argument of contingent and necessary being is compared to the corporation and government in administrative matters. It’s argued that a corporation is both created and maintained by the act of existence of a government. A corporation will continue to exist as long as the government is in existence and its act permits the corporation to exist and maintain its corporate status. Therefore with this argument, the corporation is regarded as a contingent upon existence of government both by its creation, maintenance and existence (Copleston 1962: 34).

The argument of infinite proves that God is also a necessary being. It points to existences of natural phenomenon as a infinite though recognizing that finite does not necessarily exist. Contrary to this, if at any point in time everything was considered finite, then they would be a possibility that nothing existed. However, nothing is possible to originate from nothing; therefore if indeed everything was finite, then nothing would be in existence now which is not the case. We do exist as human beings and the entire world and its components which proves an existence of an infinitely existences being to provide all the finite components, this infinite existence of a being is referred as God. After detailed examination and analysis of the argument, its worth considering some of its objections as discussed below

The argument of infinite regress is doubtful since it’s observed that, for every existence of a contingent being, there can be possible causes that are serial in nature. The contradiction of the statement states that, if the serial occurrence of events and other natural existences is infinite itself, then, other causes are not necessary forming the series itself as the sole cause, However, another objection may be advanced that, the serial infinite causal does not exist by itself hence not the first cause, its responsibility in this case is the extension of distance that originates from the effect. In another perspective, the notion that God made things to be is ill conceived since it provides existence of God as any other thing. This is true since if God is really a being, then he is not capable of causing that later came into being in the world (Thompson 1955: 290).